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Family and drama go together like oxygen and fire—one fuels the other, and while they can create warmth and light, they can just as easily spark chaos and destruction. So when Reddit user Rentinghappiness asked everyone on the platform to share the biggest secrets they discovered about their relatives, people used the opportunity to use the anonymous nature of the internet to vent their frustrations, confusions, and other kinds of emotional turmoil that they've experienced after unraveling the hidden layers of their relationships.
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#1
I discovered that my siblings and I grew up in foster care since no family members were willing to help my aunt and uncle get custody of us. We were in Missouri while they lived in Michigan. They fought the courts with what means they had but couldn’t afford the legal battle. The system thought our mentally ill mother was the best choice even though we would only be home with her for a few months before going back into the system. Rinse repeat until my sister and I at 15&16 were homeless. Luckily we had an older brother that was adopted by a great family and found us. Sent some bus tickets to Detroit to come stay with him and showed us f****d up kids what unconditional love was.
Robin Roper 1 year ago
The theory that the biological parent(s) are the best option for children is deeply flawed.
RELATED:
#2
Grandma had a younger sister who she was told had died in infancy but was actually sent away to other family members because she was severely mentally disabled and the family was embarrassed to have an "abnormal" child around. We found her living with some of Grandma's cousins where she was regularly beaten up and even doused with boiling water when she misbehaved and was in her mid 50s then but had the mental capacity of an 8-year old. She eventually got out and ended up in a special needs nursing home where she was fortunately treated better, but the damage was apparent and she'd scream and throw a fit whenever the caregivers filled up a hot bath or made coffee or had anything to do with hot water.
Pyla 1 year ago
on all sides, even her immediate family for letting her live like that.
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Panda McPandaface 1 year ago
I just do not understand how people can knowingly inflict pain on others (humans and animals), I suppose I should be grateful that I can't. The thought of pouring boiling water over someone makes my whole body tense up with stress. There is a case going through the courts here in the UK of a young girl that suffered terribly until her death at the hands of family, we hear of the cruelty people are capable of far, far too often. Civilised society? I spend most of my time doubting it exists.
Linda van A. 1 year ago (edited)
Don't forget there are also a lot of people like you.
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Upstaged75 1 year ago
Rosemary Kennedy (the oldest Kennedy child) was given a lobotomy because she was intellectually disabled. She spent the rest of her life in an institution and most people didn't even remember she existed. :(
TribbleThinking 1 year ago
Queen Elizabeth II had two disabled first cousins who were never really acknowledged. They lived in a publicly funded institution where their underwear was communal. Staff said only their mother visited them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerissa_and_Katherine_Bowes-Lyon
In addition to the personal stories we see in the thread, we also have some quantitative data to go along with it. According to a 2020 survey that looked at secrets that Brits discover, the most common ones about family were:
An affair (29%);
A secret family (22%);
A secret revelation (22%);
Unknown friends (18%);
More money than expected (17%);
More debt than expected (13%);
A secret job (6%).
#3
My mom always told me my father had died in Vietnam during the war.
Imagine my surprise when he showed up to my High School graduation because he'd seen my name in the local paper (I graduated valedictorian and I'm a Junior). Turns out my mom had kidnapped me when I was a baby to keep my father from trying to get custody when they split up. He lived about an hour away from me the whole time I was growing up and neither of us knew it.
E.V. 1 year ago
He never reported it the police? I figured it would've been easy to solve since she kept her name and was able to find her years later.
Lost Panda 1 year ago
Different time. If the father supposedly died in Vietnam, that would put this around 70s or 80s, so even if he had, it might not get that looked into.
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#4
For years we laughed about how, one night, when my dad was little, his parents got drunk and played Russian roulette pointing the gun at themselves and firing. My grandmother’s turn, and she shot herself in the throat, and she lived. Both passed away years ago, and my dad inherited the gun. One night he was re-telling the story to my mom, made sure the gun was unloaded, and realized that even he couldn’t pull the trigger back with the weapon facing himself. There is no way his mom accidentally shot herself, but there is a very high probability that my grandfather shot her.
Dad then remembered that he was sent to foster care for several months after the incident, while the police investigated what happened.
Susie Elle 1 year ago
We're not gonna mention that these people apparently play Russian roulette when drunk, instead of cherades or trivial pursuit?
TribbleThinking 1 year ago
Seeing as they made up the whole thing about the grandmother shooting herself, it is entirely possible that they made up the whole thing about drinking game too; a shooting version of "tell the police the wife was driving, not the husband", if you will.
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glowworm2 1 year ago
Drunken “accident” or not, why would this even be considered funny to begin with?
Shannon Donnelly 1 year ago
Some dysfunctional families hand down really screwed up stories as "Remember this funny story when..." the same way normal families hand down normal stories. But when you're born into those dysfunctional families and you've heard these "funny" stories since as far back as you can remember, and everyone else is laughing right along, you grow up thinking they're funny too. I'm in my late 40s and am just now at this point of my life where I'm looking back at stories I was told as a kid (mainly from my dad's side) and realize that had I been the adult me back then, I'd most likely be horrified my a lot of those stories instead of laughing along with my relatives. Hope this provides some insight.
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Ron Man 1 year ago (edited)
I'm really not believing this one. Not due to thinking drunk people wouldn't play this game, but because the dad couldn't pull the trigger with it pointing at himself. Also, she was shot in the throat which doesn't make sense. And since she lived through it, there wouldn't have been much need for a lengthy investigation by police. Oh, and the gun would've been confiscated by the police and likely destroyed.
Joe Reaves 1 year ago
If the police determined it was self inflicted they would have returned the gun if asked for it and I doubt the victim told the police the truth, hence an investigation. The police no doubt thought the cover story was iffy, especially with her being shot in the throat not the head, but if she was backing him up once she could give the police her side then there wouldn't be much they could do. Especially with forensics back then. I doubt they could tell how far away the gun was when fired and the emergency treatment would likely have destroyed their ability to tell much anyway.
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María Hermida 1 year ago
Was your father trying to pull the trigger WITH THE WEAPON FACING HIMSELF???? As far as I know, even if you make sure it's not loaded, it's a very stupid thing to do. You never point at a person, never, ever, ever, unless you want to shoot them.
🩶🩷Marvin HoG🩷🩶 1 year ago
Yeah I knew this would be great when it started with "for years we laughed about" 🤦♂️
#5
That we weren't really poor; rather, I wore ratty clothes, never got any toys, and would frequently go hungry simply because my mom just didn't give a s**t about me. I was 18 when my mom told me that she started to panic when she had less than 50K in savings, this was in the early 2000s
Bright side, it taught me not to buy stupid s**t.
Darkside, nostalgia for games/toys/movies/trips etc. doesn't exist.
Green Machine 1 year ago
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd take nostalgia and experiences over 50k in the bank. Having memories of childhood is so precious.
Couragetcd 1 year ago
Not only was she a horrible mom, she wasn't good with finances either if she kept over 50k in a regular savings account. I worked at a bank during the early 2000's and even the "money market" saving accounts had a horrible return.
Rahul Pawa 1 year ago
The panic makes me think she had financial trauma growing up. I would reserve judgment without knowing how she spent on herself. If she also didn't spend money on herself (no new clothes, going hungry, no fancy gadgets), then it's less bad than if she was living comfortably while not providing for the child.
Most of us would rather find out about these things before our family members pass away—almost 4 in 5 respondents said they wanted to discuss these matters face-to-face.
But when it comes to opening up to family, the study also found some subjects are considered far more taboo than others.
Sex is the most divisive topic, with less than half (48%) of us willing to disclose information about our sex lives to those closest to us. Compared to this, far more of us (59%) would be comfortable talking about our experiences with drugs, and 90% have no qualms about disclosing our finances with family.
#6
My best friend growing up was actually my half brother that my dad conceived with a family friend.
Green Machine 1 year ago (edited)
That must have been kinda awesome the day they found out the truth...realizing their best friend is literally family.
#7
The one vacation I went on with my Dad, which I cherished as one of the few father-son bonding experiences of my childhood, was actually my Mom telling him “Take your son and GTFO for a few weeks while you decide if you want to be married or not”. Apparently there was a “work wife” situation brewing and my Mom was not having it. .
Andrew Keir 1 year ago
I'm glad you had the good experiences when you were young, and that the problems were kept from you until you were old enough to be able to handle them
Earonn - 1 year ago
She didn't say that. Perhaps father spent more time with work wife than helping raising HIS child and that was mom's way to make him realise that children are work?
Load More Replies... Miki 1 year ago (edited)
I think I am missing something. For me work wife is nothing more then a person in work with who you bestie. There is a close bonds etc, but that's it. I mean nothing the ACTUAL spauce must be worried about.
Rahul Pawa 1 year ago
You may want to dig up an article from last week about a "work wife" that was taking it too far. A work spouse can easily, and often does turn into an emotional or physical affair. It's a slippery slope, and I think it's important to have clear boundaries with coworkers. Calling a friend your wife when you have a wife makes the boundaries blurry.
Load More Replies... #8
My father was on his death bed and I ran to the train station and hopped on a 5 hour train to see him in the hospital. When I walked in the room, there was two women (older than me by 20 years) holding him and calling him dad. A huge WTF, who are these people?!!!! went through my head and realized he had another family my entire life. He passed away the next day. I still am shocked.
Brian Droste 1 year ago
I am wondering how did the other two women responded when you walked in the room?
Couragetcd 1 year ago
Yeah, did they know since they were adults when OP was born?
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When looking at age demographics, the older generations were consistently more open. For example, 50% of over-65s are happy to discuss drugs compared to just 21% of those aged 18-24 and 20% of those aged 25-35. This trend of elderly honesty and youthful discreetness continues among topics like alcohol, money, and religious beliefs.
Maybe that's why we discover more things when we get older—others become more willing to admit them.
#9
My uncle impregnated his twelve year old step daughter. He is serving a life sentence.
Rachel Pelz 1 year ago
"Impregnated" sounds like the German word for making something like shoes impermeable. RAPED is the word. Raped, most likely repeatedly, with the consequence of the poor girl being pregnant.
Ron Man 1 year ago
Yeah, you don't get a life sentence for that though. So there's either a lot more missing here or this is another made up one.
Shannon Donnelly 1 year ago
Depends on his prior convictions, if he has them, and what they were able to charge him with, plus which state he was charged in.
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Earonn - 1 year ago
Then his suffering is over in seconds while she suffers her whole life.
Load More Replies... #10
Helluva lot lighter than 99% of this thread but I didn't find out until like 15 years after the fact that when my uncle divorced his wife and got with another woman was because they were swingers and the husbands decided to just swap wives. Now they're hardcore Bible thumpers.
EDIT: Yes, the swap was consensual by all parties.
DC 1 year ago
I find this pretty disturbing. Not that they swang and swapped, but Bible Thumpers. They're disturbing, yet, that usually isn't kept a secret, quite the opposite and its grandma, ... I find disturbing what's considered to be disturbing, and what's not.
Shannon Donnelly 1 year ago
My issue with this is swingers aren't trying to repress or control anyone. Plenty of freedom in that movement for everyone part of it and not part of it. But as soon as they become Bible Thumpers, all of a sudden they feel it's their right to decide what goes on in other people's bedrooms and bodies. That's a big nope for me.
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Christopher Crockett 1 year ago
Do as we say, not as we do. Typical christian morality at its finest.
Rosecrucian Roeth 1 year ago
Sinners make the best Christians because they know all about what they are telling you not to do .......................
#11
I was a single child my whole life, then my dad died and I learned in my 30s, that my cousin was my brother, I had a half sister who lived across the country, had a sister down the street and another half sister who was like in her late 50s.
brandyy17 1 year ago
finding out u have siblings elsewhere is both a shock and can b a fun experience. for me tho it was kinda scary. while on vacation in florida i literally ran into a girl my age who looked exactly like me. our parents stared at each other like they have met before. turns out that girl was my twin. a few years later our parents set up a trip for us all to go on to san deigo. while at the zoo it happened again. thats wen our parents told us we were identical triplets seperated at birth. our mom was 15 wen she had us and put us up for adoption. our parents had been staying in touch but none of them thought wed actually run into each other. im in new york, one is in virgina and the other in arizona. we just happened to b taking the same vacations. ive been staying in touch with my sisters since then. i learned i was adopted early on cuz it was kinda obvious. i looked nothing like them or my half siblings. i m also the only person in my family with blue eyes. wat i didnt kno was that there was 2 more of me lol. all 3 of us happen to alike in alot of ways. we have very little differences. favorite colors, hair styles and our taste in men r different otherwise we r the same. i was the first to get married but both of my sisters r now engaged.
Brazen 1 year ago
I was adopted, but met my birth mom when I was 26. I learned I had a half brother from her, also given up for adoption. A half sister who is six months younger than I am because my birth dad cheated on her. He then went back to Italy and had a family there...so more half siblings. The people I was adopted by had a boy that was older than me and then a girl younger than myself, but when she died my dad married a woman who had five kids of her own. I also learned, after she died, that my gramma (adopted mom's mom) was not really her mom, but her aunt. That was a tough one to handle...she'll always be gramma to me.
KatSaidWhat 1 year ago
This just happened to someone I know - turns out she has a half sister.
#12
My half-sisters were kidnapped by their (undiagnosed at the time) clinically insane mother who kept them from my dad for two years. He came home one day and they were all gone. He spent those years looking for them, but since it was the mother who took them, he didn’t receive much help from authorities. During those years, my sisters suffered at the hands of their mother and her numerous male companions. One day, their mother just got tired of them and sent them back to their dad.
I didn’t know any of this until a few weeks ago. It explains so much.
Alexandra 1 year ago
I think it's time to be more critical when it comes to deciding whether children are better off with mom or dad. A woman is not necessarily the better choice. Unfortunately, a woman who voluntarily gives full custody to the dad because she knows he's the best parent in this situation, is often seen by other women as a 'bad mom' even though she had her child's best interest at heart.
Rahul Pawa 1 year ago
Thankfully that's slowly changing. I think it's still incredibly difficult for a father to get full custody unless the mother shows up to court with a heroin needle in her arm, but it's way more common for men to get equal custody today than any time before.
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#13
My mom and dad were real brother and sister but they didn't know it too until they had 2 kids.
Wang Zhuang 1 year ago
I suspect more similar cases like this will emerge as more people take advantage of DNA testing.
Shannon Donnelly 1 year ago
Because of these ancestry sites, experts are realizing two things that they didn't before: 1) just how prevalent incest truly is & how underreported it has been, & 2) the consequences of letting men donate way too much to sperm banks. Sperm banks are now realizing that it was not a good idea to let a small pool of men donate hundreds or even thousands of times, because now we have Netflix movies showing exactly what the problem is: hundreds of half-siblings sharing half their DNA with the same father. Granted, this same thing was occurring naturally in small towns when a guy impregnated a bunch of women around the same age, those kids grew up together, & got married never knowing they were half-siblings.
brandyy17 1 year ago
my friend who wanted a child but was single did this. the dna she ended up picking was a guy that was her half brother. apparently her dad had been married before and no one knew until she thought it would b fun to do a family tree kinda thing. imagine her suprise wen she saw the dna of her children matched an unknown brother.
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Anne Jones 1 year ago
That’s shocking but actually very sad. I wonder how they coped with such a revelation! The children will probably need some form of counselling as they get older. What a sad story.
ShaZam 1 year ago
I'm always curious about this ... do they live in a small town? Or, are they so alike they attract each other from far away?
Couragetcd 1 year ago
My theory is that it comes from both nature and nurture. In stories where they are cousins, they probably grew up hearing similar family stories and have similar points of view. For closer members like unknown siblings, possibly familiar pheromones attracting each other. No actual research or proof for these theories.
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#14
My father, a man of questionable morals, set my shy brother up with one of his mistresses. This woman, desperate to escape poverty, agreed to the arrangement.
Tragically, my father continued his affair with her even after she married my brother. This left my brother in a deeply troubled and painful situation.
My brother passed away at the young age of 50, leaving behind a complicated legacy. I'm unsure if the child he had with this woman is my sister or my niece, given my father's involvement.
My brother's life was marked by sadness and turmoil, a direct result of my father's selfish actions.
Maris madness 1 year ago
This is what happened to one of the women in the Capote scandal in real life. She was the mistress married off to son.
#15
My parents always told us kids that my mom lost her front teeth because as babies we’d accidentally head butted her so often we knocked them out.
The truth of it was that when my parents drank (which was, and I assume is still, all the time) they would argue a lot. When my dad got sick of my mom’s voice he’d pop her in the mouth with the back of his hand.
He’s the one that knocked out her teeth, and then blamed it on us as babies.
Rafael 1 year ago
Well, technically correct for the OP, since their their father was, indeed, a massive bïtch...
Load More Replies... #16
I knew that my biological father had a sister that died when she was 6-yrs-old. It wasn’t until I was grown that I heard the full story. My Dad was 10 and Helen 6. He was supposed to be looking out for her while they were outside playing. They had walked to a neighbors house and Helen wanted to go home. Dad wanted to stay and told Hellen to walk back home by herself. She was hit by a car and died. My grand-parents blamed my Dad and he carried that guilt his entire life.
Winnie the Moo 1 year ago
You should never guilt your kid for doing something you was supposed to do as a parent
Brandie Litchfield 1 year ago
Oh yeah that "your the oldest so you're in charge of the younger kids so if anything happens to them it's your fault". And in today's world, a woman was arrested for allowing her 11 year old to walk into their very small town, less than a mile away...i wonder if the dad was haunted by extreme guilt and have addiction issues to numb that pain? I'm sure that trauma weighed heavily on him, survivors guilt would have been terrible especially with his family blaming him.
HardBoiledBlonde 1 year ago
I was a free range child when I was 6. I was blamed for anything and everything that happened to me.
E2U&U2 1 year ago
Many of us were free-range kids at a young age. Most of us were lucky, but a few weren't. Most of us survived, but a few didn't. We became independent, free-thinking kids young. I thought it was a gift. I'm only now realizing that a lack of nurturing creates adults who find it hard to trust or accept help.
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Beak Hookage 1 year ago
The stock photo shows how it SHOULD have been, with a grown adult taking care of the little kid rather than a ten year old boy.
#17
My grandma's sister died when she was 15, hit by a car right in front of the family house, well my uncle bought the house years ago and found her hidden journal, turns out great grandpa was abusing her and she [unalived] herself...
Agat 1 year ago
Anyone else thinks that these euphemisms somehow remove the heaviness of such stories, and the experience of the people? [Unalive] my a*s... This girl deserves her awful experiences to be called as they were.
Rafael 1 year ago
I think everyone that isn't Google, Facebook or TikTok agrees with us. I can't speak for victims relatives or survivors of mürder, süicide, sëxual ässault etc, but even if the actual words are triggering, soon the bracket replacements will be as well. We will run out of words if we keep doing this dance.
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ABC no seven FCK CENSORING 1 year ago
KILLED, BP. She KILLED HERSELF. For fúck's sake, what do those censor twats think they'll achieve by this?
meeeeeeeeeeee 1 year ago
Unaliving yourself makes a mockery of suicide, it's not a f*****g cartoon, whoever decided that during the censorship discussion is a f*****g wanker.
Luis Hernandez Dauajare 1 year ago
Call it by its name. She committed suicide. Stop delluding yourselves thinking that if you soften the name of a thing, you soften the thing. It does not happen and you will only look ridiculous.
Xenia Harley 1 year ago
I read a study many years ago where some child psychologist theorized that many childhood accidental deaths are deliberate on the child's part. This story is just terribly tragic.
#18
My mom's side of the family owned a couple family members from my dad's side of the family during the slave times.
Carla Campbell 1 year ago
My mom's grandfather ran an underground railroad for slaves to "escape." He charged money. Then "caught" them and charged their owners to bring them back. Evil evil a*****e.
ADJ 1 year ago
If you look deep enough you will find a slave and a slaver in your family tree. Some of your ancestors were raped, some were murdered, some were rapist, and some were murderers....
Angela C 1 year ago
Slavery existed in nearly every ancient civilization so the odds are pretty good that this is true
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Serial pacifist 1 year ago (edited)
I know it is common practice, but I really think the word “own” shouldn’t be used. It still sounds so demeaning. It was so from the perspective of their captors, but it shouldn’t be accepted as a description of their status today. Those were human beings, who were wrongfully imprisoned, enslaved, uprooted from their homeland, tortured, worked to death. Enslaved is what they were.
David 1 year ago
the legal term was owned, because back then people could be considered property under the law, just like it was (and still is today) in many parts of the world. Slavery is an evil we have removed from most of the developed world, but sadly millions still in slavery or defacto slavery in places like Pakistan, Qatar, Libya, etc. Also if you know the history of slavery, most were not wrongfully imprisoned, in most of the ancient world, if your side lost a war, the poor were taken as slaves by the victor (happened in Africa, Europe, Asia, etc, for thousands of years) and it was considered the norm in the ancient world. The powerful African kingdoms traded them to Europeans, who took them to the New World, and worked them to death. As to slaves in the USA, only 200,000 were ever brought here, most were the descendants of those brought here in chains, which is actually worse, because they were born into this evil and their whole life was for suffering
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Couragetcd 1 year ago
That must have been horrific to discover. I hope they don't have any extra DNA in common based on how OP's fathers ancestors were treated
#19
Apparently my dad tried to strangle his ex wife and the only reason she survived is because she cut his arm with a kitchen knife. My mom and I got to find out that little fun fact together, because his ex called her to warn her that he was crazy when she found out he’d remarried. 🙂 so there’s that.
ShaZam 1 year ago
No .... because her mom married him ... she was warned by the other ex-wife .... which I would stop the relationship. I can't imagine hearing that and having a child with him.
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Serial pacifist 1 year ago
I am surprised BP censor didn’t change the word strangle into something like “manually unair”.
#20
On of my moms sisters died of SIDS in the 50s. Years later it came out that my grandfather got tired of hearing her cry and frustratingly shook the s**t out of her. She actually died of shaken baby syndrome. I don’t know how authorities didn’t know (?).
Multa Nocte 1 year ago
Because information on both these phenomenon were not well known at the time.
RedHairedDragon 1 year ago
Tell me you never had a baby without telling me you never had a baby
Load More Replies... HTakeover 1 year ago (edited)
You're telling me that you think there's no evidence that you can shake a baby and cause permanent damage or outright kill them? A baby, whose musculoskeletal and nervous systems are still fragile, whose heads have to be supported when holding them for a few months after birth, whose skulls haven't even sealed yet?
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#21
I knew Mum was sick… I had no idea how many times she tried to [unalive] herself.
Rafael 1 year ago
I wonder if this [unalive] thing actually help people going through this issue, or if it is just for show. I wouldn't mind to change my vocabulary if it actually helped people, but I suspect this is much more about AdSense than anything else. Google will bowdlerize the entire Internet.
Kristal 1 year ago (edited)
Do you mean using the word unalive specifically instead of kill or suicide? As someone that was very nearly successful in suicide, it's a word used for filters of highly controlled websites/platforms and not at all to be respectful of an affected person's feelings/trauma. I'm not offended by the word unalive but suicide isn't a bad word. More respect is given to those affected if the word suicide was used.
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Child of the Stars 1 year ago
This really breaks my heart. I'm a mom who struggles with depression and anxiety and have occasionally struggled with the urge to self-harm. But I've always been able to seek and get help when I see the warning signs.
HardBoiledBlonde 1 year ago
If a parent ends their self, it greatly increases the odds that their child(ren) will at some point in their lives do the same. The stigma has been removed and ending one's self is seen as a viable coping mechanism. Do not leave your children with this legacy. Continue to seek help, you matter and are loved.
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arlene goodart 1 year ago
Why do you keep using "unlived" when it is 'murder' or sucicide -- it is ridiculous
cj be like 1 year ago
The poor thing (sending love to all OPs in this thread with family trauma)
#22
My dad had a whole separate family with a daughter a year older than me. He ran the family business, and the lady that lived next door to the business had been his girlfriend since before my parents got married. When my parents got divorced I was about 11 or 12 and I didn't really know why. My dad and I barely talked all through high school but for some reason I talked him into letting me move in with him between my senior year and college to get to know him better.
What I found out about him was that he was d**k, a womanizer and alcoholic. The verbal and physical abuse i took as a kid was even worse now that I was older, resulting in actual fist fights a couple of times. I worked at his business and made friends with the lady next door who we'll call Wendy. She made me dinner all the time and really took care of me while my dad was too drunk to cook or do any parenting at all most of the time. I was 18 and the lady next door had a daughter about my age and we became friends. This is the daughter, we'll call her Dianne.
We hit it off that summer and neither of us knew that we were half siblings, and there was strangely something about her that made me really like her. Dianne was pretty but not crazy beautiful, but I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Something about her just drew me to her. I think she felt the same way, because we spent a lot of time together getting to know each other that summer. I couldn't get enough of her nor her me. We watched movies on VCR at night after work every night (I'm that old), and smoked a lot grass out on my porch. One night I took Dianne to a house party at a friends house and after a few drinks I was getting up the nerve to make a move when she kissed me. We ended up hooking up that night and messed around pretty good, but thankfully didn't have sex. I was kissing her good night on her door step when her mom came out screaming and yelling and told us we weren't allowed to see each other, and I never saw her again she wasn't around for the next few days. When my dad found out he flipped his lid too huge fist fight that night. It got so weird around there I just went back to my mom's for the few weeks left before college.
I mentioned to my mom, that Wendy was really nice and I really liked her, but I had screwed up somehow and pissed her off and I wasn't sure why. I never told my mom about messing around with Dianne, but I don't think she knew about her. She has dementia now so I have no chance of knowing if she did. Over the next few years, my dad and I drifted apart again, I had real hatred for him for a long time, and we didn't speak for almost 30 years.
Found out he was dying and I went to see him to bury the hatchet. It actually wasn't too bad. While we were catching up on the events of our lives, my dad told me the whole story. My dad had two girls Wendy and my Mom that he was dating. He chose my mom and broke it off with the other woman, and asked my mom to marry him. A few months later right before the wedding Wendy shows up very pregnant and tells him its his. My dad who was running his dad's business at the time, put her up in the property next to the business and took care of Wendy and Dianne. Eventually things rekindled with Wendy and he ended up in a relationship with her the most of the time he was married to my mom. He admitted the guilt was too much and he started drinking and over time the drink was all that was left, both my Mom and Wendy had eventually kicked him to the curb and moved on with their lives, so did I and so did my young sister and Dianne. It was a terribly sad story. For the first time the verbally and physically abusive monster had his mask pulled back and was human after all. I didn't completely forgive him, but I definitely understood him for the first time in my life.
Brandie Litchfield 1 year ago
It's hard to have compassion for someone that has caused such harm and damage, that says a lot about your integrity. I'm glad you had that chance to let go of the resentment and pain.
#23
My family fought in WWII
on both sides.
Ace 1 year ago
Sadly all too common around here (Alsace) where the villages and their occupants switched between being German and French several times over the course of the last 150 years. War memorials, of which there are a lot, never mention one country or the other, it's understood that the fallen sons had no choice in who they were forced to fight for, or against.
Powerful Katrinka 1 year ago
There’s a wonderful (and horrifying) book by a soldier from Alsace who, despite being French, was forced to fight with the Germans. It’s called The Forgotten Soldier.
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HurlWurk 1 year ago
My spouses' family was German and pressed into service, you were not given a choice as a man. Meanwhile, the women of the village were able to keep the local SS from killing some POWs by using them as laborers and basically threatening to kill the bastards since there were only 4 SS stationed at the village and something 100 women.
Karen Krause 1 year ago
Even in the States, this happened. My Dad fought in the war for the US. He had cousins and uncles fight for Germany. Yes, dad was sent to Germany as he did speak the language.
TribbleThinking 1 year ago
A family friend who died recently was an engineer who helped develop the Spitfiire. He physically helped to make changes in the wings, etc to get an extra mile or two of speed here and there. Before the war, he attended a grammar school, went to the Continent on an exchange programme, and spent an enjoyable time with the Hitler Youth.
Joe Reaves 1 year ago
Unless you were in the SS or a concentration camp guard (you could opt out of that although you'd likely end up on the Russian Front so there weren't great options), you didn't have a choice to not fight. Heck by the end of the Reich they were putting young teens on the front line - and not in the they lied about their age and volunteered sense that you see in the unoccupied allied countries.
#24
I have an uncle who went to prison for [unaliving] a homeless man in the street with a few of his friends. They let him out early and he goes to family gatherings. He’s fairly close with a lot of the family and as kids we would have sleepovers at his house. At one of the sleepovers we overheard him abusing his wife thankfully they divorced but the family still invites him. But she’s the crazy one according to the family.
whodunnitfan2013 1 year ago
My relatives treat me how this family treats the now-ex-wife. I'm the crazy narcissist, meanwhile the real narcissists and abusers are such saints.
Brandie Litchfield 1 year ago
Narcissists always accuse their victims of what they themselves are guilty of. The emotional abuse is very crippling, I hope you're working with a therapist to work through that trauma so you see yourself as valuable and worthy, you didn't deserve that. Unfortunately, I can also relate to being the family scapegoat. I could never understand why I was treated so differently than the other kids in our family, why nobody stuck up for me....we tend to recreate that same cycle in our relationships unfortunately...
Load More Replies... ABC no seven FCK CENSORING 1 year ago
MURDERING, BP. For MURDERING a homeless man. That's what the original post says. For fúck's sake, what do those censor twats think they'll achieve by this?
Earonn - 1 year ago
I mean, I would go to the family gatherings as an adult just to say "The potatoes? Sure, here they are, murderer", and "might be, uncle, but the opinion of an abuser never counts". I'd totally stir the s**t. Might get cut out from the family, but that wouldn't be a loss anyway. Or how about keeping silent but putting strong laxatives into his food and drinks every time? Oh, the possibilities...
#25
My grandfather was greatly displeased with his son Roland, who was mentally handicapped after an infection. So one day he gathered his 8 children in the yard, took out his hunting rifle and staged a mock execution of Roland to "teach him to be right".
My mom was maybe 10 years old when this happened.
misfittrixx 1 year ago
All the kids should have been taken away right then and there that's just cruel
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 year ago
OP says it happened in rural Sweden. I imagine a lot of rural places (especially decades ago) didn't have a lot of agencies to protect children :(
Load More Replies... Joshua David 1 year ago
My father did similar "drills" to me in the 90s. Except it was for my feminine nature. Out proud gay man today.
HardBoiledBlonde 1 year ago
Glad you made it through the living hell your sperm donor created.
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The only Plueschopossum 1 year ago
Wtf did I just read? How can someone even think this would be a good idea??
Brandie Litchfield 1 year ago (edited)
It horrifies me how normalized it was when men terrorized their entire family, and abuse of women and children happened in every family. This is why generational trauma is a huge issue still. Each generation has suffered greatly...it explained a lot once I learned about generational trauma and the cycles of suffering and poor coping skills it's caused. I'd like to believe that as a society, we will eventually learn to invest in all children equally, as they are the future. How can we know this fact yet allow so many children to suffer still?
Brandie Litchfield 1 year ago
For example, my grandfather dragged my grandmother out of the house by her hair, in front of their 6 kids, and repeatedly punched her in the face. My mom and aunts discuss it as if it was totally normal for their mom to have bloody nose.
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#26
My great grandfather got his wife’s sister pregnant and f****d off leaving both women humiliated. With their mother and children the two women made a new life in Canada where no one knew of their shame.
FreeTheUnicorn 1 year ago
Even today, the sister who screwed her brother in law would be shamed. But can't blame them for not wanting people to know their business.
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Shark Lady 1 year ago
It was at least 4 generations ago, a lot has changed since then. An unmarried mother was considered shameful enough, even without the added scandal of sister's husband being the father.
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UpupaEpops 1 year ago (edited)
My great-grandfather did the same. His wife's half-sister's husband disappeared in the War. She couldn't get a divorce, nor could she re-marry in her ultra-conservative Christian community. So my great-grandfather gave her a child. His wife cared for her sister throughout her pregnancy and supported her during post-partum. She never re-married. I wonder whose name it is on the birth certificate of the child? But of course nobody feels like asking her about it.
#27
Grandma didn't just disappear. Grandpa put her into an institution for what would probably be baby blues/ depression and irritation with a 5 year, 3 year, and a few month old kids, he was a trucker, so he was gone the majority of the time.
They gave her enough brain zap zaps that it turned her into a shell of a person, and she didn't even remember her kids. They visited only once when the youngest turned 18. She stayed there for 40 years completely alone, and no one knew or cared she died. She's just a random number in a mess of a graveyard they toss the wards of state in. She's less than two hours away in Minneapolis, but I won't drive in The Cities. I much prefer my small Wisconsin town.
#28
That my father's arrest at a rodeo in his teens (that led to his mom kicking him out, complete estrangement from his mom and siblings and his eventual adoption by his best friend's family) was not just a little dustup. He beat another person so badly the victim almost died. He was fifteen.
Papa 1 year ago
If he was the aggressor, you're right. If he was defending himself, maybe not.
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#29
Great grandparents living in Europe lost all their kids in the Spanish flu epidemic; immigrated to the US and just popped out 5 more kids. Wild.
MellonCollie 1 year ago
Why is that wild? If the great grandparents had sex, that would likely result in babies back in the day. The fact that did lost their children apparently did not mean they never had sex anymore ... Perhaps they even had more children on purpose. I can imagine many reasons, ranging from grim to loving.
The Dark Sun 1 year ago
yes, it was totally normal back then to have a lot of kids, and the Infant mortality rate was very high
Load More Replies... Pyla 1 year ago
Queen Anne, last of the Stewart dynasty, had 17 pregnancies, none survived into adulthood. child mortality was huge, so high it skews data on how old people lived to be "back in the day". Truth is, the human capacity to live into their 70's (and beyond) hasn't changed much, but the commonality of early death has diminished greatly. ...Read John Boswell's The Kindness of Strangers to see how many kids in the Medieval period were just abandoned. And it was long before the Victorian sensibility of an actual childhood even came about.
Fun Size 1 year ago
Something had to have been seriously wrong with poor Anne. That was a s****y birth track record even by the standards of the day. I read somewhere a theory that she might have had Hughes Syndrome ("sticky blood"), which would have made it tough to transfer through the placenta and led to so many miscarriages and stillbirths.
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Michael MacKinnon 1 year ago (edited)
The demographics in the first decades of what became the "hygiene / sanitary revolution" are all skewed, with really big families appearing in family trees all of a sudden. The change was that because of the reductions in infant and child mortality, suddenly so many more kids survived infancy (and people not used to this continued to have kids at the same pace as previously).
Theora Fifty-five Johnson 1 year ago
Having more kids doesn't mean they didn't feel tremendous loss. Spanish flu, diseases like polio, measles, smallpox, all took a terrible toll on families. Wild because of the intense tragedy,
Binny Tutera 1 year ago
My grandparents lost 7 children in one night. I can't even imagine the grief.
Tina Girard 1 year ago
Well, birth control was pretty restricted then, IIR - beyond condoms anyway
Cydney Golden 1 year ago
It's not like they killed the children. It was the flu. Were they supposed to remain celibate out of guilt?
#30
My great aunt was a nurse at a mental hospital and fell in love with a guy being evaluated to stand trial for [ending people]. She helped him escape and they ran off to Florida. But the police tracked them down and her lover was sentenced to the electric chair. She got off easy, though.
Before all of that craziness, her younger sister had come to live with her and then [unalived] herself. My aunt worked in a distant city and promised her father that she would get her sister a job at the hospital and look after her. But the sister got pregnant by a married man who dumped her, so she jumped off a bridge.
I found all this out like 80 years after it happened while doing family research. My 90 year old mom reluctantly confirmed it.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 year ago
BP staff is REALLY terrible at choosing stock photos to accompany the posts they steal off of Reddit.
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ABC no seven FCK CENSORING 1 year ago
[ENDING PEOPLE]? SERIOUSLY? BP, screw off with this STUPID redactism. It's MURDER. MURDER! And the sister KILLED herself. STOP SHAMING AND TABOOING SUICIDE, for fúck's sake.
#31
So this isn’t as traumatic as most of the posts in this thread but it is still kind of disturbing.
Okay, here goes I found out a few years ago that the real reason my parents stopped playing Pictionary wasn’t that they didn’t like it. It’s that it caused multiple arguments where my parents ended up not speaking to each other for weeks at a time.
The first argument that was a big thing was that my mom did not know that Zimbabwe was a country.
The second was about whether goose pimples and goose bumps were the same thing.
And the third one was about whether a pig’s tail curls clockwise or counterclockwise. Apparently that argument led to my parents only saying “clockwise” or “counterclockwise” to each other for about two weeks.
My siblings and I all found out about this about ten years ago when my uncle came for a visit and reminded my parents of some of their legendary arguments (including the goose bumps/goose pimples one). Apparently my mom and dad used to play my aunt and uncle in different are games a lot and my parents had to stop playing Pictionary and a couple of other games because they got too heated. LOL.
DC 1 year ago
That sounds not that dark, but rather stupid. I know less severe cases of similar argument-seeking couples, but they usually end up laughing at it within less than an hour. Maybe it's because they're, like, sane...
Kristal 1 year ago
I think the word you are looking for is mature. Other couples are more mature.
Load More Replies... Gatorraid 1 year ago
I'm starting to think OP needs a lesson on disturbing and funny
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Hellcaste's Wife 1 year ago
My mom and dad could no longer play Risk against one another after my dad got my mom so angry that she got a cramp in her tongue! LOL
Boo 1 year ago
The longest game of Risk between hubs and I lasted 15 mins. He wiped the floor with me and I still refuse to play that game 20-odd years later lol. He still brings that up every so often along with his victory lap round the kitchen 🤣
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Brandie Litchfield 1 year ago
If only Google had existed at that time to answer such important questions!!
Explore more of these tags
What do you think ?
Cindy Brick 1 year ago
Please please PLEASE stop using the word 'unalive' instead of suicide, murder, etc. We are old enough to handle this! It also makes it incredible difficult to read. (I feel the same way about d***s, etc.)
CG 1 year ago
My "father" was a Neo-Nazi before I was born, and went to a few rallies before my older brother was born. I dunno if I should consider that too big of a shock, because he's basically a Right Wing Canadian, who basically hates the same things Right Wing Americans do (vaccines, LGBTQ+, things considered "woke", etc.). My mom doesn't know, and frankly, I kinda want to tell her, because he's not really in my life anymore.
Bryan Hamilton 1 year ago
My grandfather was left on a family door step as a baby and that family took him in. They ended up being bank robbers and eventually when my grandfather was old enough to drive became the getaway driver at 12. Finally in his teens got busted and spent 12 years in prison and then escaped with another man and got caught after a hold up at a liquor store. The other guy shot and killed the sheriff and also took a bullet and died. My grandfather turned himself in and part of the plea agreement was that he serve out his time being a barber for the army in which he did til he passed away in 1967.
Dre Mosley 1 year ago
One of my cousins was date raped in college and impregnated. She didn't want the child, another cousin(her brother) and his wife adopted the baby. The woman he knows as his aunt is actually his bio mom.
The_Nicest_Misanthrope 1 year ago
One of my ancestors was executed by hanging for stealing a sheep
Cindy Brick 1 year ago
Please please PLEASE stop using the word 'unalive' instead of suicide, murder, etc. We are old enough to handle this! It also makes it incredible difficult to read. (I feel the same way about d***s, etc.)
CG 1 year ago
My "father" was a Neo-Nazi before I was born, and went to a few rallies before my older brother was born. I dunno if I should consider that too big of a shock, because he's basically a Right Wing Canadian, who basically hates the same things Right Wing Americans do (vaccines, LGBTQ+, things considered "woke", etc.). My mom doesn't know, and frankly, I kinda want to tell her, because he's not really in my life anymore.
Bryan Hamilton 1 year ago
My grandfather was left on a family door step as a baby and that family took him in. They ended up being bank robbers and eventually when my grandfather was old enough to drive became the getaway driver at 12. Finally in his teens got busted and spent 12 years in prison and then escaped with another man and got caught after a hold up at a liquor store. The other guy shot and killed the sheriff and also took a bullet and died. My grandfather turned himself in and part of the plea agreement was that he serve out his time being a barber for the army in which he did til he passed away in 1967.
Dre Mosley 1 year ago
One of my cousins was date raped in college and impregnated. She didn't want the child, another cousin(her brother) and his wife adopted the baby. The woman he knows as his aunt is actually his bio mom.
The_Nicest_Misanthrope 1 year ago
One of my ancestors was executed by hanging for stealing a sheep
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